•Crowns And Arrows• [Klance]

How Not To Deal With Emotions

'Interesting shift of topic, prince', the tanned boy thought as he tried to hold a chuckle. That was a good save, or it would have been, if Lance hadn't noticed how red he still was and the way his expression had changed when he threw a flirt at him.

Making a mental note on the rather positive reaction, he proceeded to continue their chat as if nothing had happened.
"I've worked since I was fourteen, your majesty. Commander Shiro took me in due to the village's rumours about 'a young boy having hunted a white hart'."
The white hart was considered a rare, hard to find piece of quarry, and his entire family had gathered to celebrate and delight itself with such one in a lifetime meal.

Five years of wandering through the castle walls was more than enough to learn the guard patterns, blind spots, hideouts, loopholes. That explained how the blue thief got away each time.

"And as for quarry, the most common animals are breeds of deer such as red deer or harts, hares and rabbits, ducks, boars, pheasants..." He could go on and on about animals and their breeds.
"I can get us fish too of course, but that's not my job in the Castle," he pointed out as if prince Lotor could hear from the distance.

"Each one is different to chase and take down, some more violent than others. I've got plenty of scars from boars and.. other animals." He had a particularly bizarre one on his left ankle due to a wolf's bite when he was a kid, but he didn't want to remember that.
"So it's no easy task."

Keith hummed softly, glad Lance had let him off without further teasing, or whatever it was. Besides, it was kind of interesting to hear about all these things.

Keith wondered for a split second what he'd have been, if he hadn't been a Prince, but then he realised he would have been even more useless than he was now. He could do very little. There was no money in drawing.

Maybe he could have done something with animals. Train horses or something like that. Or he could have used his fighting skills, which he was above average at. Maybe. But if he hadn't been a Prince, he wouldn't have had that kind of training.
It didn't matter. He was.

"I can see that," he mused. "And your commander, do you like him? Is he doing his job right?" Keith chuckled on the inside. Of course Shiro was doing great, he always was. But it would be good to hear it from someone else. Maybe Lance had a different view, from being under his command.

But Keith knew Shiro would never do anything illegal, or immoral. Well, being this close to the Prince, this familiar, his father definitely wouldn't approve if he knew just how deep their bond was.

But still, Shiro was the only person he was allowed to talk to like that. Shiro was safety. And Shiro had helped him so many times when he was in trouble, when he was running from his father or some other royal, when he had done something wrong and Shiro knew just how to fix it.

Keith looked down and smiled softly. Where would he have been without that man? Dead, probably. Even if he didn't have any siblings, he wouldn't trade Shiro for a real brother, ever.

Lance would've thought the question was quite strange if he hadn't noticed how fond the prince was towards that man. Before answering he looked at their surroundings and the tracks they'd been following just in case he'd get distracted and accidentally change the course.

"Of course, commander Shiro is the best at what he does, the bravest of knights and the strongest of men," he praised him honestly with stars in his eyes, looking at the sky as the snowflakes gradually stopped falling.

"...I've always admired him, since I was a kid." He let his memory take him years and years ago, when he was seven years old.

"A man... An old man, was about to be punished in the center of the village for everyone to see, something about him and his family having several debts to the king. But then the commander appeared, and he stopped the other knights from hurting him by offering his own savings instead to give him more time."